Chapter 4

The thinly spread units of the "cleansing" force were beginning to show signs of mental fatigue and loss of morale despite the efforts to reward them with perks mostly in the form of available female detainees.

The unit under Major Mike Majors and his assistant Captain Sally Hogg was no exception to the sense of exhaustion that robbed them of their ability to function in pre-day-zero terms but their instinctive urge to take sexual pleasure where they found it kept them sane enough to continue to perform their duties. Fortunately, the availability of female subjects was plentiful as they screened and processed the survivors and the morale of the troops kept pace with the supply of fresh "ass" from the infected zones.

On the other hand, the stress on the unit under the command of Colonel Martinez and his chief interrogator, Corporal Sandy, increased rapidly as they were in constant contact with both the Looters and elements of the survivors that were greatly resistant to capture and processing. As time went on, the unit became more and more ruthless in their procedures and the members, both male and female, were de-sensitized to the violence of suppression and disposal of opposing forces. It seemed to be totally appropriate in the case of most of the Looters, but quite often, it was all too brutal when used against the sometimes defenseless survivors.

He had some ethical reservations at some of the methods being used as standard operating procedure (SOP) by the capturing units but felt it was not his place to interfere since it seemed to be overwhelmingly successful in the outcome. To some degree, as a male, he was excited by the harsh treatment of the females to put them in the right frame of mind when it came to obeying the demands of the sex-deprived troops under his command.

His force had been reduced to less than fifty percent of the original field duty qualified personnel but the promise of new reinforcements was accelerating into hard cold fact each and every day. They had even taken the initiative to recruit several of the younger more nimble females into the force as back-up for the nocturnal duties and to keep the equipment properly tended with devoted attention and lots of sweat as they cleaned and polished during daytime hours. The Colonel had taken a young teenaged girl of about eighteen under his wing to massage his back and give him satisfactory rubdowns after his daily shower. Her name was Alice and she looked a little like a clueless Barbie doll with no original thoughts of her own. He hadn't screwed her as yet but he allowed Corporal Sandy to spank her and use her mouth for sexual gratification in front of him and he saw that the girl was not in the least bit upset at the humiliation and in fact seemed to enjoy the fact that she had no say in the matter.

It was at the end of the first summer that he came up on a force of about eighty "wild" humans taking shelter in a secluded outpost which must have been a summer camp for youngsters in the pre-day-zero days. It was situated on a lake teeming with fish and the surrounding woods were well-stocked with berries and edible onions and mushrooms of every description. They had managed to establish a string of traps that culled small animals for their stew-pots and seldom fired a weapon even though they were fairly well-armed. It was that lack of firearm activity that had kept them off the radar for such a long period.

He deployed the unit to make certain none of the survivors would escape his net and watched them for a day before moving in to sweep them up and sort them out.

The initial contact was close to a disaster because his spearhead element had become a little too relaxed after months of encountering only non-resistant opponents. His lead squad of nine well-trained soldiers was annihilated by two short bursts from a hidden .30 caliber that must have been filched from some National Guard Armory along with a supply of ammo to keep it ready to keep attackers at bay. After that initial shock of defeat, they were able to knock down the pockets of resistance without too much difficulty but the men were incensed at the humiliation and he didn't interfere when they just lined up all the men and executed them without even making a pretense of interrogation to give a reason for their madness. To make matters worse, several of the survivors had managed to escape across the lake in small canoes and disappear into the woods on the other side. There were no more canoes on the shore and the long way around by land meant that the escaping survivors would have a least a half-day head-start on them before they could even begin pursuit.

There were about two dozen females still alive and he decided it would be in his best interest to allow the men to enjoy them for the evening and then eliminate them as well because he didn't want witnesses to the way they had taken this camp with little regard to human decency or the rules of war.

The loss of nine men in a matter of seconds was a shock to the entire unit and the sight of the bewildered females with their heads down in the dirt and their backsides up high for punishment brought out the worst in his men who were not hesitant to belabor them with hands and cocks until they were lumps of degraded human flesh with no hope of redemption. He felt ashamed of himself for not having a slightest urge to grant them mercy and felt no pity for their plight. It was probably a sign that he had already succumbed to the inevitable loss of all shreds of decency in his conduct and the conduct of the troops under his command.